Happy Marriages Can Be Detrimental to One's Health, Study Finds

People who are happily married tend to eat more, eventually gain weight

One recent study focusing on the perks of being happily married and the overall health condition of the spouses argues that, all things considered, so-called matches made in heaven might prove detrimental to one's health on the longer run.

To put it in a nutshell, the researchers who took the time to investigate this issue maintain that, as far as they can tell, people who consider themselves to be happily married tend to pay less attention to their appearance, simply because they lose the motivation to attract one other life partner.

As a result, they start eating more and eventually gain weight, the researchers explain.

By the looks of it, newlyweds (i.e. people who have only been married for a few years) who experience a high degree of marital satisfaction are the ones most likely to put on weight as a result of their feeling that they got everything they bargained for when getting married.

Psychologist Andrea L. Meltzer, currently working with the SMU Department of Psychology at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, wished to make the following observations:

“On average, spouses who were more satisfied with their marriage were less likely to consider leaving their marriage, and they gained more weight over time.”

“In contrast, couples who were less satisfied in their relationship tended to gain less weight over time,” said psychologist went on to argue.

These conclusions were reached after researcher Andrea L. Meltzer and her colleagues monitored a total of 169 first-married newlyweds over the course of four years.

While monitoring these couples, the psychologist focused on both the marital satisfaction that each partner experienced and on how their body weight changed in time.

“We know that weight gain can be associated with a variety of negative health consequences, for example diabetes and cardiovascular disease. By focusing more on weight in terms of health implications as opposed to appearance implications, satisfied couples may be able to avoid potentially unhealthy weight gain over time in their marriages,” Andrea L. Meltzer suggests.